Hebe News – Article 1
A VISIT TO THE NEW ZEALAND GARDEN AT SAVILL GARDEN
On our way to the Hebe Society AGM in Sussex, we decided to visit the New Zealand Garden at The Savill Garden, near Windsor. The garden was opened in its current form in April 2007 by HRH The Duke of York.
Her Majesty the Queen visited New Zealand in 1986 and was given a collection of native plants. This formed the basis for the New Zealand Garden at The Savill Garden. Redevelopment has enabled the Garden to be enlarged and relocated. It has been developed under the supervision of the new Head Gardener, Harvey Stevens, who worked with leading New Zealand landscape gardener, Sam Martin. The NZgarden is situated at the highest point of the garden, on sandy soil, and this is both the sunniest and windiest part of the garden. It is also at the edge of the garden and backs on to the streets and houses of Englefield Green.
You enter The Savill Garden through the new visitor centre, with its graceful, sinuous roofline. As you go into the garden you turn right, then after passing the Winter Garden, the New Zealand Garden is on your right. It is on a slope, and is divided into island beds, with paths winding between them. Large rocks are set into the nearer, southern beds (see colour insert). All plants are well labelled, with the Maori name included, if known.
To the left a trio of small trees of Hoheria angustifolia caught my eye. At first the branches looked bare, but as I drew nearer I could see the many small, serrated, juvenile leaves. Beneath the hoheria there was a light green carpet of ferny-leaved Acaena buchananii, and next to them was a group of grey-leaved Hebe pinguifolia ‘Pagei’ in flower. On the right of the path a group Hebe brachysiphon was followed by a group of Libertia peregrinans; the small, light green leaves of the former made a nice contrast to upright sword-like green and gold leaves of the latter.
A group of prostrate Ozothamnus leptophyllus shrubs had small, round, green leaves, with the whitish undersides showing. Nearby was a specimen of Pittosporum obcordatum with its branches sprouting tiny, heart-shaped green leaves.
A group of silver and green strap-like leaved Celmisia rutlandii made a good foil to a group of Hebe cupressoides, with its upright, green, conifer-like foliage. Around the corner at the highest point are three information boards describing the New Zealand Garden, its plants and the use the Maori made of them. Behind the boards was a bed of grasses, in various shades of green and brown, with occasional hints of red.
Nearby, planted with Hebe cupressoides as a backdrop, was Clematis afoliata, possibly one of the world’s most boring plants. It was a low mound of bare stalks, with no leaves. Although Lawrie Metcalf says the small yellow-green flowers are highly scented.
At the rear of this bed there is a large drift of Uncinia rubra. The red-brown grassy mounds are nicely contrasted with the shiny, round, light green leaves of Griselinia littoralis.There weren’t many hebes in the garden, but in one bed a group of a dozen or so plants of the small, grey-green leaved Hebe topiaria contrasted nicely with Stipa arundinacea, in brown and green grassy mounds.
My impression was that the garden needed time to mature, as many of the plants are not large. April is not the best month to visit as evergreen plants are seldom at their best. Give them a month or two to cloak themselves in a layer of new foliage and they are fine. There are not many hebes, but there is a most interesting collection of New Zealand plants, many of which you will have never seen before, let alone heard of.
Tony Hayter
Registered Charity No 801398
